


Not Heroes, But Friends.

by myownknight



Series: Secondhand Agents. [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-31 00:44:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1025327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myownknight/pseuds/myownknight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura Maro and Katy Morris are two of SHIELDs finest Agents. How they met, how they got there, and what bonded them is story unfortunately much more complicated then it may appear. Katy, a sole surviving sibling in the wake of 9/11, and Laura, a recently graduated and desperately underestimated women must work together when their training with SHIELD takes an unexpected turn. Marvel Big Bang 2013.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW warnings in end Notes.

[ ](http://s113.photobucket.com/user/cassandrafisher2007/media/1f9446ee-3975-4df8-a9ae-b237b8bfeed0_zpsda5cc116.jpg.html)

 

This isn't exactly the beginning of this story, but all stories must start somewhere, and this is as good as anywhere.

There are many ways that you may hear of someone. By reputation, or rumor, is common. And sometimes what is said is more important then what is actually true.

SHIELD is not made up entirely of redeemed heroes and recovering villains. After all someone has to file the paperwork, make coffee, and take care of sweeping up all the loose ends after the heroes come back from a successful missions. Morris and Maro, are clean up, to put it simply. And they are very good at it.

Maro and Morris hadn't always been Maro & Morris, though. Once upon a time, before perfect mission records and synchronized badassery, they had simply been Laura and Katy. Two women, from different walks of life, assigned to each other as training partners almost as a nominal punishment.

This is their beginnings. Or perhaps, their ends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warnings for overall Fic: Discussion of death, off screen psychological and physical torture, mature language, and references made to events of 9/11.
> 
> I am so sorry that it took me so long to finally add the artwork, but one thing led to another, and what do you know over a month passes... Anyway a huge thank you to the amazing Cassandra Fisher for the art work! She did a wonderful job, and I love her take on the characters.


	2. Part One.

  
[](http://s113.photobucket.com/user/cassandrafisher2007/media/861d2350-2bb1-47fd-934f-738f7d55fe6d_zps0c5120dd.jpg.html)

BOSTON MASS. USA, 2002. September.

Katy leaned in checking the white balance one more time, rocking easily back on the soles of her beat up kicks, shoving another strand of too long hair behind her ear before she gave a double thumbs up to Fred, lovingly known as Dead Fred on the streets. They were live.

" Okay dude, so my question today for you, is what is most important to you, in life? Got an answer for me yet?" Katy steady the rickety second hand stand with one hand, the other waving carelessly at Dead Fred to go, chipped nail polish flashing in a stray sunbeam between tight packed apartment buildings.

Dead Fred grinned cheerfully at her from the second to the bottom step, happily ignoring the lens he was supposed to be facing as he answered.

"What's most important to me? I don't know man, I never really thought about it before you asked me last week, ya know?

I guess it'd be surviving, whatever I gotta do to just keep getting through the day today. Get some grub, find some place to crash for the night, make sure nobody fucks with my stuff, you know. Life. Can't worry about tomorrow, cause you don't know if you'll make it that long, ya dig? You're a cool kid, Katy-did, I know you own it."

Five sentences, two paragraphs, and a a veritable nightmare of slang and grammatical errors to translate. It was more then she'd gotten from Red Amy or the Bolyston Brothers though, so It'd have to do. Snapping the lens cap back on, she leveraged herself back up off her worn heels and offered her fist up for a knuckle bump.

" That's perfect man, thanks. You just saved my ass, Teach is gonna freak if I don't have this in by class tomorrow." Dead Fred fist bumped her back before easing right back into his signature slouch, already relaxing in the afternoon haze of South Side Boston in the spring time.

Katy took off, tarnished bangles jangling and backpack swinging dangerously low off one shoulder as she headed for the nearest T Stop. She hopped the Line back to her stop, slamming haphazardly on campus, through buildings, and into her disaster zone of a dorm automatically ignoring the flashing message light on the answering machine, as she dropped her backpack on the ground and added Dead Fred's incredibly philosophical take on life to her measly previous collections.

She was so going to fail this class.

A half assed entry from her overly devout and insanely messy roommate Amy wasn't much of a help, and the entry from the kid in her art class who's name was honest to god Skyler but insisted on being called Fiver for some reason, was certainly, ah, interesting, but might theoretically also double as evidence in any drug bust they might possibly do on campus in the next two years. She'd have to double check what the statute of limitations was on accessory after the fact to getting as high as a kite on school property during class time.

A hasty shuffle through the pile of priceless painstakingly hand copied research notes, half finished essays, and old job applications at the foot of her bed yielded her cell phone, while a quick search of the mini fridge that was crammed with dented beer cans and half empty salad containers confirmed that once again for some unknown reason Amy had forgotten her keys when she left, and they had somehow ended up in the fridges teensy tiny crisper slash ice shelf thingy that never got used.

Blowing a quick kiss to the worn and slightly tattered photo taped to the doors mantel, she took off again and headed for the stairs.

Joanna next door with a major in Economics knew the drill by now half way through the semester, and just shouted a mostly muffled assentive confirmation when Katy slid the keys under her door in passing. Joanna would give the keys back to Amy when she showed, and in return Joanna and Katy's next joint project paper in their bullshit BioEthics class would magically appear fully completed without her having to lift a finger. They would get an A, and Katy wouldn't have to pay halfsies for the locks to get changed AGAIN. She was already on a first name basis with the campuses on call locksmith, one more change and she was going to take him up on his 'buy two lock changes, get one free' offer and see if she could get him to bump it to a 'buy three get two free'.

Not to mention Amy's left eye was starting to get twitchy every time she had to ask her thursday night prayer group to pray for her to find her keys again. Maybe they should just stick her on the weekly rota, regardless of her keys current status. It probably couldn't hurt at this point.

Taking off in a dead run, Katy paced two other students who were likely also late for the T, managing to cross three intersections and a set of tracks just in time to slam onto the inbound green line just before the doors closed. One of the students made it. The other did not. Katy would have held the door, but the conductor had this steely eyed gaze going, and she couldn't afford to get kicked off and wait another ten minutes for the next one headed in her direction. Diane was sweet, but showing up late for the third time to a date would probably be the last straw.

Deep breaths. She was going to be fine. Diane was fine. She was fine.

Katy was perfectly fine.

Deep breaths now.

Fucking Roger and his fucking friend who had a sister that needed a date. If she had to go on one more blind date in a desperate attempt to prove she was in fact coping just fine thank you very much, she was going to actually snap and give them something real to worry about.

Honestly. People died all the time. It didn't mean those around them suddenly stopped... working.

Even when it sometimes seemed like the world was still ending in slow mo.

God. Almost a year and a half later, and she still didn't feel safe. She hadn't even-

No. Just don't think about it. No use borrowing trouble.

 

 [](http://s113.photobucket.com/user/cassandrafisher2007/media/981ced62-f832-4f46-8a37-410baf1ae8e4_zpsba892b8c.jpg.html)  


LONDON ENGLAND, UK, 2002. September. Same Day.

"Mum! Have you seen my briefcase? I'm going to be late as it is and lord knows what I did with it last night, I am so bloody stupid sometimes" Laura called as she hurried down the hall of her and Mum's tiny flat, clacking slightly as she got reacquainted with the teetering heels she wore for interviews.

"It's on the counter, love, and don't forget to take an umbrella! Telly says it's going to just be windy, but it's going to rain, I can feel it in my bones."  Laura's Mum's muffled voice drifted lazily out of the minuscule washroom through the muggy August air, catching Laura just as she spotted the damned piece of luggage. Snatching it, she clattered out their door and down the hall, forgoing the perpetually slow lift for the far faster if slightly more hazardous stairs.

Bursting out the front door of their building only running two minutes late, it occurred to her that three inch heels and a tight skirt might not be the best thing to run in. Of course, this only occurred to her as she was already in the midst of a head on collision with a man, his dog, and his coffee mug, which he some how miraculously managed to not spill down the front of her outfit.

"Fuck-! Sorry love, you okay? Listen, I've got to run, I'm late, but I really am very sorry" she babbled as she disentangled herself from the leash and its bemused owner, grabbed her briefcase from the edge of the puddle it was teetering at, and darted off again with an apologetic smile.

The man stared after her hurrying figure half annoyed, and half amused. Scratching absently at his ear as he picked up the leash and his mug, he slyly flicked back on the ear bud nestled discreetly in his ear. "I'm fine, Sir, false alarm. Civilian Morris, L.  running late, no harm no foul. Placed Tap N' Track, Lost my coffee, though. Targets still in building, resuming modified route to exterior entrance."

The earbud crackled once. "Copy that, Hawkeye. Missions parameters have not changed, proceed to entrance point and standby."

"Roger that." Flicking his ear bud back in to standby, the young though already infamous agent resumed his utterly ordinary and in no way eye catching placid dog walk past the apartment building and the one next to it, the animal perfectly pacing him. The on call animal trainer Perkins was definitely getting a rave review in his after action report when he got back.

Agent Barton, affectionately known as Hawkeye in the field, had been attached to this case for almost two weeks by now. In that time, he had tapped and recorded fifteen apartment's phone calls, rerouted the local stop lights in the event of needing a speedy getaway, eaten approximately twelve billion pizza, and dubbed the disguise dog Pizza Dog, for obvious reasons.

So far the most he had collected on the residents of the building was enough evidence to end four marriages, charge two counts of credit card fraud, and predict the porn preferences of every male and half the females over the age of 16 in there.

Quite frankly, the odds of actually being able to prove that the residents of Apartment 17A were in fact a crack team of cyber-terrorists related to the recent spat of remote hacks of hospital equipment throughout the U.K. were getting smaller and smaller every day. The only reason one Ms. Laura Maro had even merited a 'Tap N' Track' dissolvable location tracker, was Coulson had flagged Laura's file for notation in the case's electronic data folder, for evidently no reason to the average agent's eye. Laura and her mother were utterly unremarkable, notable only in that their story was depressingly common. Still, if Coulson thought he should keep a benevolent eye on her during this cluster-fuck of an operation, odds were there it would do no harm.

Ms. Diane Maro currently worked as an Assistant Manager in a shop downtown these days, having started there as a shopgirl just one week after she filed a restraining order against her (at the time) soon to be ex-husband, one Patrick Brian Kent. She had also covered shifts somewhat irregularly but with lessening frequency over the years at a local bar, presumably to help make ends meet as her daughter completed secondary school and Uni on scholarship.

Ms. Laura Maro (previously one Laura Maro Kent, name changed on 16th birthday via court petition, all above board, entirely legal, and not coincidentally coinciding with the finalization of her parent's divorce) was currently between jobs, having just graduated with a degree in Sociology & Public Relations, and slightly less debt then her classmates in thanks apparently to four years of incredibly strict budgeting and saving. According to her phone and email records, Ms. Maro was been in fact on her way to an interview at a rather prestigious Public Relations Firm when Barton has placed the tracker that morning.

Barton idly watched the steadily blinking tracker pass under buildings and across streets as it's unwitting carrier took the Train to her stop. There was something benignly soothing about watching a particular families' entirely normal activities day in and day out. Completely unaware of the chaos threatening to erupt around them, only concerned with getting through this day in the next, moving throughly life as smoothly as they could. It was sweet.

Naive, but sweet.

 

LONDON ENGLAND, UK, 2002. September. 2 Hours Later.

Laura exited the tall imposing building just as silently as she'd entered it, her steps smooth and even all the way to the Tube, entering the atypically empty carriage. Staring blankly out the window across from herself for 8 stops, she demurely rose and exited the train headed for the relative safety of home.

Needless to say, the interview hadn't gone well.

Laura was good. Young yes, but she'd been in the top ten percent of her graduating class, had stirling silver recommendations from multiple professors, and the vision to be able to achieve something if they would have just given her a chance.

Instead she got a clearly intoxicated interviewer crudely inquiring about her relationship status and threatening to black ball her in the industry when she complained. It wasn't fair, and it wasn't right.

And she hadn't gotten the job.

Bugger it, and bugger Mum's dry household declaration. Fuck family history, and bugger her life. If this was what the next 50 years was going to be like, she didn't want to have to face this sober.

Laura smoothly turned at the entrance of her apartment building, and headed for the nearest pub. Unbeknownst to her several stories up, a quiet witness radioed in a bathroom break, before detaching itself and following her silently.

 

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, USA, 2002. October. Two Weeks Later.

Barton hummed into Coulson's office, barely slowing to close the door behind him before dramatically dropping on the worn couch tucked discreetly in the corner. His still mud incrusted boots hung over the edge, perilously close to the furniture's fabric. Coulson serenely ignored the intrusion, continuing to steadily and neatly sign off or deny the depressingly large stack of  assignment and agent requests on his desk.

Barton was, unsurprisingly, on probation again for having "neglected to adequately communicate the extent of time his post was left untended", just another pointless note in his file, but irritatingly none the less. Privately, Coulson agreed that keeping an eye on Ms. Maro as she had steadily and politely worked her way through a surprising chunk of the nearest pubs, stock had been more productive then continuing to monitor the surveillance equipment that a blind monkey could operate.

Coulson had flagged Laura's file for notation in the case's electronic data folder, for no reason to the average agent's eye. Laura and her mother were utterly unremarkable, notable only in that their story was depressingly common. Still, if Coulson thought he should keep a benevolent eye on her during this cluster-fuck of an operation, odds were there was a damn good reason.

Besides, she seemed like a good kid.

Two more signatures, and a neatly printed notation to add a note to the reporting agents case file about his clearance level, and Coulson paused for a sip of coffee and cocked an expected eyebrow at Barton's lounging figure.

"Well, Barton? What are you waiting for?" He asked dryly, as if Barton's wait was of course all his own fault. Clint barely batted an eye before launching into his drawled and meandering verbal report on the three week long op that had yielded precisely no confirmed terrorists, one undercover dog that was now stubbornly smitten with the field agent, and a collective tab at the nearest four pizza shops that Accounting had actually contacted Medical to confirm it was possible for one man and one dog to eat just that much pizza before they would sign off on it.

Barton's recounting of Ms. Maro's unfortunate interview experience was marginally more interesting, prompting another discreet notation in her file, but by and large the op had gone as expected, and the debriefing went quickly.

Once finished, printed, and signed in triplicate by the both of them, Coulson collective some leftover unfinished paperwork and escorted Barton out, turning the lights off as he left for the evening. In his desk, he left behind Ms. Maro's file tucked just under Barton's most recent volume, with discreet notation to have Marcy in HR add her to the next batch of interviews. Perhaps SHIELD could use a few more agents with her level of self composure.


	3. Part Two.

BOSTON MASS, USA. 2006. October. Six Hours Later.

Katy hairy eyeballed back the monotone Asshole Suit that had been sitting across the table from her for like an hour now. His continual switching between asking simple questions ("please state your full name for the record") and leading ones ("why did you slightly blow up the east wing of MFA and toast the electrical systems from the inside out while you were at it in the middle of a terrorist hostage situation?") was now just a slightly annoying affectation. Since her answers had been ranging from less then helpful ("Marcus Aurellius The First, Emperor of Rome and all its Lands and Kingdoms by the power of Groktar, The Great and Mighty") to down right seemingly useless ("OMGTBHWTFIDEKA, LOLZ Noobs haz no swag FTW reblog") they'd been sitting in more or less ambivalent silence for almost ten minutes now. Hence the hairy eyeball-ing.

Quite frankly, Katy was starting to get the tiniest bit hysterical on top of being perturbed, which was an entirely reasonable reaction to be having in her opinion. There was only so much a girl can take; And being held at gun point, shot at, and nearly blown up , all while on her first perfectly nice date in almost a year, then being hauled in for "questioning" and transferred twice without ever being read her rights or properly processed was just a bit too much to ask to be honest. Around the fourth time she got told to "tell the truth" Katy had pretty much given up.

Come to think of it, getting dragged off by the Bostonian Division of Men In Black had probably contributed to whatever prompted Carol to scream at her vanishing back to not bother calling her again, as she was expertly lifted into the back of an ambulance to get an Xray of her ankle as if the bone sticking out wasn't enough to tell them it was broken.

Fuck. Katy had really been hoping this one would work out at least well enough that Roger would get off her back about dating someone. For a celibate pacifist, he sure could and would be a hardass when butting in to other people's business.

The Suit apparently decided to try again, with yet another pointlessly leading yet some how amazingly subtly revealing shrink a dink question. Obviously he hadn't learned his lesson yet.

"What do you want?"

The dude was practically asking for her to be obtuse. And she did so hate to disappoint. "Peace on earth goodwill towards men, but I'd settle for a bigger set of boobs."

The near silent and timely appearance of a shiny New Suit at the door may have been the only thing that stopped Asshole Suit from actually trying to strangle her. For a supposedly emotionless android-wannabe, Asshole Suit was remarkably easy to wind up. They hadn't been there two hours, and Katy hadn't even had the chance to delivered some of her best material yet. Oh well.

New Suit looked marginally more competent, and instantly won points by first gently and blandly dismissing Asshole Suit (she gave him the cutesiest finger wave good bye she could managed in a pair of handcuffs, with a cheery "Bye, Sweetie!" that almost had him lunging back into the room at her before New Suit shut the door behind him), then producing a bottle of water and a sandwich out of nowhere which he proffered to her, and finally by bothering to actually introduce himself beyond "Put the weapon on the floor, and turn around slowly." Besides, his eyes sparkled behind his oddly coke-bottled glasses.

"Hello, I am Agent Sitwell, I'm with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division, and I will be taking over for Agent Harper. Do you have a preferred title or name by which I may call you?"

Katy sat up a little straighter and smiled winningly at him, offering her shackled hand across the table for a handshake. What the hell, she might as well go all in.

"Kathryn Morris, but as I'm sure you've heard, you can call me Aurellius if you'd like. Mind telling me why I am actually here, beyond Asshole Suit's admittedly valiant attempt at a conversation through trial and error?"

Agent Sitwell managed to crack a small bland smile at her description of Agent Harper's 'interrogation' technique, if you could call it that.

"Why don't we start with when you arrived at the Museum, and you can walk me through your day from there. I'm sure you have a fascinating story about how you ended up in possession of a very illegal firearm, and how two of the nine terrorists holding you and several other individuals hostage throughout the building ended up incapacitated in the short time that the lights were out."

Katy offered a weak smile back.  
"Well, you know what they say about death, fire, and thieves?..." Despite his continued bland paternal smile, Agent Sitwell didn't seem to be buying it. Shit. Sighing, Katy lean forward and leveled with him.

"Look, I know it was a dumb thing to do, but seriously, I was wigging out, there were guys -with guns- and I didn't know if there was even any hostage negotiations or what going on, and I'd already seen their faces, which is so never a good thing in the movies. I figured either I could sit there and cry like a little girl until they blew my head off, or I could at least take a couple of them with me. In all honesty I didn't think it would actually work".

Agent Sitwell barely blinked. "You didn't think what would work?" Katy stared back at him, put slightly off balance by the question. "The, um, ungrounded free flow electrical system I rigged? It was a toss up between if the current would choose to run through the dude's nervous systems or if there was some kind of metal running through the floor I couldn't see, plus I needed to throw both ends close enough to either side of them to complete the circuit rather then letting it redirect to the nearest electrical outlet or whatever. And they needed to be standing close enough together to both get shocked. In all technicality it probably should never have worked, especially with the components  I had to work with and my time frame. I didn't even have a soldering gun, for petes sake, but, well, it worked".

Agent Sitwell gave in and blinked. "I see." He looked down and flipped through a few pages of the file he was carrying. "You are in college right now, Ms. Morris?"  
"... Uh, yeah, Northeastern, at the moment. They have a pretty good business program."  
"Is that what you are studying?"

Katy had a sinking suspicion she wasn't going to like where this was going. "No, that's just what I tell people. I'm majoring in Social Work, with a double minor in History and BioChem right now."

"Ah."  
Katy was starting to develop a deep and healthy distaste for noncommittal sounds of acknowledgment.

"And do you normally, uh, 'tinker' with electronics like the one you built in the middle of a hostage crisis using, let me see, 2 D batteries, one very old Nokia cell phone, a floor lamp cord, some neon green duct tape, one slightly torn japanese fan, and a pair of nail clippers, all without being seen or heard by your hyperaware abductors?"

Crickets almost chirped. She could practically hear them.

"Uh, ah, not exactly, per say, I mean electronics aren't really my thing. Anything flammable or explode-y in a totally legal and hypothetical way I'm your go to gal, but my electrical systems are a little rusty, I haven't played around with any recently, so my precision is a little off."

"I see." Agent Sitwell was really fond of saying that. It wasn't particularly soothing. "Well, other then some relatively minor destruction of personal and public property, which is understandable considering the circumstances, you haven't actually broken the law, in so far as your actions during the unfortunate incident today. While we would advise that in the future, should you ever be caught in similar circumstances that you do not attempt any such actions without appropriate training before hand, I believe there is nothing more to cover at this point."

As he spoke Agent Sitwell neatly tidied up the folders he had brought with him, clicked off the small unobtrusive recorder built into the table, and slid a small white business card across the table.

"Here is my card, should you have any questions or remember anything else that might be helpful, and we'll be sure to get in contact if we need anything else from you. A member of the NYPD will be by shortly to escort you back to a precinct where you can give your official statement, be returned any of your personal effects that are not being held as evidence, and then you will be free to go.

Thank you for your time Ms. Morris, I apologize for the miscommunications that led to this delay, and I wish you good luck with your studies".

Agent Sitwell. stood up, smiled blandly, which somehow managed to make him look ever so slightly creepy in a vaguely comforting way, and shook her hand. Part of the way out of the door, he paused, turned, and asked her a question.

"Ms. Morris, if you don't mind me asking, why did you risk it? You were there with a date, you had no idea if your invention would work, and they had guns. They could have shot you."

Katy smiled weakly back at him. "I guess I'm not so afraid to die these days."

"Ah." With that, Agent Sitwell. left, as unobtrusively as he had arrived, the silence in his wake somehow echoing, rather then stifling.

And Katy's hands were still cuffed. Fuck.

Sure enough, about fifteen minutes later, a very friendly looking Latina police officer arrived to uncuff her, and take her back to the precinct where she'd originally been 'processed' for lack of a better word. She at least got to ride in the front seat, this time. Once finished, an Officer kindly gave her a lift back to her dorm just as the sun was rising, glinting between the tall oblivious buildings. It'd been almost 12 hours since she'd left her room and had headed for the station.

Weeks passed, and the glamour of being That Girl Who Survived A Hostage Situation faded to uncomfortable notoriety. Katy still looked over her shoulder, half expecting to see dark colored vans every where she went, still struggled with well meaning attempts to empathize, and with frustratingly vague class assignments. Unsurprisingly enough, her half hearted documentary on the meaning of life in the aftermath of tragedy was received with less then enthusiastic arms.

Katy honestly couldn't really bring herself to care.

The neatly packaged job offer at the end of the semester, tucked between credit card applications and nearly due bills, seemed almost anticlimactic after two months of looking over her shoulder every other minute.

Kathryn Elaine Morris, College Sophomore, sole surviving sibling, and general self described "paranoid free thinker" barely stopped to read the fine print before reaching for the phone with one hand, and the paper listing the line for interviews with the other. Screw options, she'd always found efficiency and that oh so seductive allure of secrecy just the tiniest bit sexy.

 

LONDON ENGLAND, UK, 2002. October. Same Week.  
Laura Maro, recent uni grad and currently temp at an advertising firm run by one of her mothers friends, didn't blink twice at the neatly labeled packet tucked in the middle of her mail bundle of the morning. Bills, advertisements for lines of credit she didn't need and couldn't afford, and yet another "We Regret To Inform You.." for a job she was more then overqualified for.

Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division was certainly not a department she'd heard of before, but more importantly they where offering a position that was actually related to her yet un-started profession, in house training and certification as needed, and a small but generous signing bonus should she make it past the first round of interviews.

What the hell. Laura absently mindedly snagged her tea mug as she meandered over to the computer to shoot an acceptance email to the attached contact. SHIELD couldn't be worse the working a front desk all day, and part of the in house training period was in New York City, all expenses paid. Laura'd always wanted to travel.

 

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, U.S.A. 2003. May. SHIELD Training Facility.

Arrival at SHIELD was strangely anticlimactic after months of high strung anticipation. It actually reminded Katy strongly of her college orientation, complete with a minor horde of fresh faced incoming trainees, inadequately labeled corridors that all looked the same, and a rotating cast of upper class men gathered to either mock the newbies, or stand around and look intimidating and very, very bored. Laura was still busy figuring out how to exactly tell her mother that her darling daughters dream job in all actuality involved nondisclosure agreements, without actually violating said agreements, or freaking both of them out.

Shuffled into a line, given a numbered slips, and then shuffled into a waiting room for nearly three hours as six Senior Agents efficiently processed and paper worked the trainees made Laura very glad she had gotten up extra early to make sure she was on time. It was especially auspicious that she'd in fact skipped making coffee this morning in her haste to leave her minuscule but well appointed hotel room. Joy.

Finally her number was called, by a reassuringly sturdily built women who introduced herself with a terce "Agent Jones, come along Ms. Maro" who ushered her down a corridor with two other Candidates, one of whom was a pasty face white kid who looked two seconds from throwing up, and a short brunette women who was working just the tiniest bit too hard to look blasé about the whole process.

Once down the corridor, each were directed into bland white walled offices, and given stacks of paperwork three inches high, with instructions to start filling it out and let her know if they had any questions.

Katy couldn't believe how inconceivably cool this all was.

Agent Jones was called out shortly, apparently having to go help a very attractive if slightly intimidating and kinda short muscular Agent with information about some place with a name she could neither pronounce nor remember. There may have been a G or a Y in it.

Katy got to pass the time by initialing and signing approximately another three thousand four hundred form absolving SHIELD from any liability whatsoever if she died, was maimed, sustained injury, inadvertent sex change, inadvertent sexual identity change, inadvertent or unintentional change in sexual preference, change in species, genus, etc, or incidental pregnancy in the course of her duties. They also had a matching fund 401K with a decent stock portfolio option that sounded very interesting. She might just actually take them up on it.

Agent Jones soon returned to collect the paperwork, handing her a temporary access pass, a cell phone which literally could not be powered off to assure that when it rang she answered it, and a set of keys to her assigned housing along with a packet providing the sparsest of details about her future roommates and official housing agreement that apparently had been somewhere in the midst of paperwork that she'd numbly filled out for almost an hour.They where then ushered out the door and into locker rooms to change into provided gym clothes for their first class, just in time for the next round of victims to start the intake process.

Training was... Chaotic, to say the least. Days were divided evenly between never ending seminars jam packed with information ranging from crash courses in helpful phrases in 10 languages, how to negotiate a hostage situation as the hostage, how to negotiate a hostage situation as the hostage taker, how to negotiate a hostage situation from the outside, how to fill required paperwork out in triplicate right the first time, and how to order takeout in almost any country without dying of food poisoning or blowing the mission.

The other half of the day was spent either running pellmell through smoke filled mazes and converted warehouses while speakers blared confusing and often contradictory instructions and code phrases, in the shooting range being yelled at for having shitty form, or in the gym practicing choke holds while getting yelled at for having poor form. It was fantastic.

Katy, tentatively assigned as a future field agent barring any colossal failures in training, learned how to rappel, how to conduct a U.N. sanctioned interrogation (the phrase "Letter of the Law" came up multiple times through out that particular course), how to blend into almost any urban environment, and when it was and was not advisable to call for backup. (loss of major extremity, for example, call for backup, full stop. Loss of minor extremity like a toe or something, call for back up only it it won't stop bleeding, you're afraid the frostbite or gangrene is spreading, or the missions will not be compromised by you doing so.)

Morris's fellow trainees varied from course to course, as different future agents finished differing qualifications and were traded like pack lunches between Departments at such a rapid pace that one morning a trainee might be destined for Accounting, and by the evening thanks to qualifying as an EMT in college be assigned to Medical in exchange for a Portuguese & Korean speaking gymnast that Linguistics and Spec Ops where fighting over, and ten mini strawberry cupcakes left over from someone or another's birthday bash the night before. Everyone might have to qualify on the shooting range, but Public Relations and Archive might not necessarily need to know to reload a weapon while dangling from a rock climbing harness two hundred feet up in the air. SHIELD re-qualified or trained nearly all their staff on site, so any one from a former Personal Assistant to a Navy S.E.A.L. Candidate was her partner from week to week.

Katy's roommates were... Interesting, to say the least. Laura, a skinny little nerd of a thing from Legal or HR or whatnot who didn't look like she'd say boo to a ghost and had been through intake with her, was both her literal roommate, and randomly assigned training partner for the majority of training; Which sucked a big one when it came to the physical training, though Maro proved to have a surprising level of endurance, but was a boon when it came to the super secret spy crap classes. Maro was a natural at distracting people, the normally quiet women making a great funny man to Katy's abnormally serious straight man when the occasion called for it. Laura distracted the Mark, and Katy stole, picked, or bluffed her way to the goal.

Outside of training, getting ready in the morning in a shared apartment in lower Manhattan that housed two SHIELD Special Agents in Training, one CIA resident medical Attendant, A Junior Special Agent With Diplomatic Immunity, one very scruffy cat, and a mostly broke artist was... Interesting. To say the least.

The third time Katy ducked down and forward to avoid Laura's hair straightener to her right and Lawrence's shaving kit to the left and slightly behind her, she prayed for the billionth time since moving in for another bathroom to magically appear in their three bedroom one bath apartment. Thank your generic deity that Alex was on assignment in Syria or Srilanka or Cesnia or somewhere already, because otherwise she would be brushing her teeth in the slightly leaky shower, while Alex fought with Lawrence over his shaving kit, and with Laura over who ate the last of the cinnamon toast crunch for the billionth time.

Derek, the fifth roommate, was passed out on the couch. Again. Fred The Cat (technically Lawrence's, not that he'd admit it) was currently sitting daintily on his forehead, as he was wont to do to any one who would hold still long enough. Katy had woken up like that more then once.

For someone who was habitually late come rent time and was utterly incapable of societal niceties or remembering anything but the score of the last hockey game he saw, Derek sure was 'connected' to put it lightly. Katy automatically checked off second hand exposure to marijuana at her biweekly self reported sustained injuries form now, just so she wouldn't have to sit through yet another 'Just Say No' in-office workshop during lunch hour.

Laura just got her mystical contact in Medical to fudge her test results. She loathed any needles that didn't have something to do with stitches or pain killers, more then she loved following regulations, and for some reason being quiet, polite, and british endeared her to more people then Katy would have guessed.

In general the whole roommate arrangement only worked out because on average only two to three out of five people were there on any one given night. If Laura was gone, so was Katy, and if they were home chances were Lawrence was working the night shift, or Alex was still gone on months long assignments babysitting diplomats and making sure their security details didn't get caught coming out of crack whore houses in third world countries when they were there to discuss reforms focused on eliminating human sex trafficking.

Derek was either at the apartment, or out getting stoned. The only reason he was there was he came with the lease, compliments of the previous set of residents who had apparently unilaterally decided to move to Montana and start a commune half way through their lease last year, mostly of their own accord and completely not influenced by SHIELD's brilliant plan to house its next set of incoming agents and support staff dorm style on two floors in one building conveniently located midway between all three of their supporting facilities in the city, to equally inconvenience everyone. The toss in of a double handful of various other agencies representations was mostly to take advantage of the subsidized housing and networking opportunities.

Lawrence also fortunately had the patience of a saint, so on the odd nights when Derek did not in fact pass out on the couch, Lawrence was the picture of a perfect roommate. And with equally paranoid roommates, Alex didn't have a problem with Laura or Katy using the other bed on the off chance the one of them got hypothetically lucky at some point in the distant future. There wouldn't have been anything for them to find by snooping anyway. Alex was very good.

Another slap dash traffic jam ensued briefly in the tiny kitchen, Lawrence running late to cover a shift for his buddy, Laura and Katy trying desperately to remember if they had everything they'd need for an estimated two week in house training run for graduation. Katy was pretty sure her favorite set of throwing knives in matching holsters was in her other go bag back at base, but Laura insisted she had stepped over them just last week, all while ruthlessly stealing the last of the coffee and one of Katy's socks, which Katy promptly stole back while Laura snagged both of Lawrence's instead. Lawrence absentmindedly cursed them both, before heading out the door, keys in hand, just barely stopping Fred The Cat from escaping into the ever exciting fourth floor hallway. It was comforting to know that even if he did escape, the worst he could do was con his way into a neighboring apartment. And since Katy either worked with, or lived with someone who worked with most of them, it wasn't that big of a deal. Thank God for dirt cheap interdepartmental block housing. Or, not, since the elevator was currently three rows deep of people waiting to leave, and the stairs were distinctly unappetizing from a 6th floor point of view. And to be honest, they were down right creepy. Katy'd just learned how to kill a guy with her pinky, and she thought they were creepy. Laura privately concurred.

Lawrence was maybe one of three New York City residents who still stubbornly clung to owning a car in New York City. There was a pool going on how long he would last, and for not being around very often, surprisingly enough Alex was winning. Alex always did say people had 'hidden depths'. If Lawrence's destination hadn't been in the exact opposite direction of theirs, convincing him to give them a lift would have been much easier. As it was, they arrived at SHIELD Headquarters with Katy driving, Lawrence sulking in the backseat, and Laura still trying to figure out what exactly had happened to her other shoe. (Under the drivers seat, behind the first aid kit and emergency munitions trunk for some unfathomable reason. Lawrence apparently had a really good throwing arm when motivated.)

Dropped off with a variety of expletives and mutual exchanging of rude gestures, they had just enough time to check in and hustle for line up and assignments.


	4. Part Three.

SOMEWHERE IN MIDDLE AMERICA, 13 DAYS LATER.

Somewhere in the background one of the PA's in training, Lehane something or another, was balanced very precariously on top of a side table, with a half empty bottle of tequila in one hand and a slowly crumbling coookie in the other bellowing out a particularly loud 'HOCKEY STICKS, AND BALLS OF STEEEEEELLLLL". Laura was pretty sure she really didn't want to know, especially since Katy was now enthusiastically joining in on what was probably the songs chorus before two SHIELD trainees soaked in Patron got a hold of it. Now it it was just mostly incoherent, if slightly muffled by the ambient background noise of thousands of gallons of water pouring down from the heavens outside hard enough to flatten anyone dumb enough to go outside. Two of the trainees were already soaked and being evaluated for concussions by Medical's current batch of Interns. From the looks of it, they were debating whether scalpels or syringes were in order, as evidenced by the increasingly loud if muffled insistence by one patient that he was "perfectly fine, really" and the other's not so stealthy attempt to crawl away without further injury to her already twisted ankle. Poor Bastards.

Paul who was in Human Resources training (but was likely to be loaned to the Accounting Department during Tax Season) was busy looking appalled at his fellow trainees lack of decorum and general lack of shame over in the corner. It would likely take him about a half an hour to work up the rest of his ire to say something, and then another seven or so minutes to storm out in a huff and then hold this against all of them for the rest of his unnatural born life. Everyone else was caught between varying stages of making valiant attempts at catching up to Lehane and Morris's level of intoxication, arguing about the likelihood of the storm passing and power being returned quick enough to catch the final plot scene in the season finale of Stargate SG1, and trying to organize a half blind game of some cross between strip poker and duck duck goose. There was a lot of cheating going on. Laura was busy being simultaneously appalled at her coworkers taste in alcohol and party games that didn't involve Twister, and secretly grateful that it left all the good stuff to her.

Well, almost all of it, as one of the instructors, a tall intimidating one eyed black man they had been directed to refer to only as "Sir", had at some point appeared at her elbow and absconded her drink, which he was currently chugging with no regard for its fine vintage, impeccable lineage, or faint lipstick stain on the rim.

Laura got herself a new glass and a refill for him without commenting. With any luck by the end of this Office Party Slash Lock In From Purgatory she would be blissfully unaware of anything that had happened, and this would all be a dream. A wacked out, psychedelic, therapist needed ASAP dream. One which hopefully did not involve chugging alcohol with one of her teachers while her future coworkers wandered by in various states of intoxicated dress, gently illuminated by the delicate glow of emergency candles, smart phone screens, and the suspiciously larger batch of glow stick bracelets that Lehane had just happened to have in her purse. Then again, Lehane had pulled odder things out of her purse before, including food, weapons, pointy sticks, various religious icons, and living organisms, so light up jewelry, mini shot glasses, and tiny air plane bottles of vodka weren't really that weird in the grand scheme of things. They were practically down right normal at this point. How she managed to smuggle any of it pass inspection at the beginning of the rotation was still up for debate, with more then one pool running despite the technical close of the training run almost 4 hours earlier.

Laura elected to ignore the implications of the conclusion of that particular line of thought. Some things were just better left unanalyzed, and the three incoming Psych Department Trainees were huddling in the corner with two of the guys from Human Resources in a way that was making her distinctly unnerved. Someone should intervene before they made one of the former Infantry guys cry. Again.

 

JUST OUTSIDE OF NEW YORK, NEW YORK, MILITARY AIR FIELD.  
26 HOURS LATER.

7 hours in an enclosed space with several dozen America's finest hung over and occasionally retching in the isles was nowhere near Katy's idea of a good idea, although admittedly her own day and a half bender had left her a pounding headache and the ever present taste of cheez its and vodka in the back of her throat, but Katy had faired better then most. For some unfathomable reason once faced with occasional gail force winds and the thunderstorm of the decade, essentially the entire Cadre of instructors and superior officers had elected to lock themselves in a conference room with two days of supplies, rather then deal with the slightly giddy and certainly hyper mass of Trainees running on two weeks of mild sleep desperation and the stolen promise of what passed for home these days.

One thing had led to another, and almost every stash of technically prohibited alcohol had been unearthed to fuel an, ah, 'interesting' form of stress relief, that had only really tapered off as the rain did and the senior Agents had one by one emerged, serenely ignoring the littered passed out and sleeping bodies, even the ones covered in red marks from particularly violent rounds of egyptian rat screw, small balls of paper from a combo manhunt/capture the flag/round robin competition HR had cooked up, or just plain debris from the unplanned event.

Once landed, paperworked, cleared by medical, and debriefed, everyone was essentially told to GTFO, and not come back until Monday. Mandatory three day weekend, complete with one last scheduled accountability drill before the end of the day.

Katy snagged Laura as she brushed by, and managed to pantomime getting takeout before heading home, avoiding making sudden movements or loud noises that might provoke some of the harder hit Trainees to lash out. Laura nodded exaggeratedly, and headed for her locker. Takeout and three days on the couch in front of a tv screen, sounded like heaven right about now.

 

Location ? SOME TIME LATER.

Laura woke up slowly, her head spinning, and then sat up abruptly, ignoring the dull ache that was her body as she took in her surroundings. Morris lay sprawled out in the desiccated ground beside her, still unconscious and snoring slightly. And possibly drooling.

"Well, fuck."

That pretty much summed up Agent Maro's observations on their current situation. One minute they had been walking down the street, minding their own damn business and bickering over whether to pick up some Pad Thai or Pizza for dinner, and the next she's waking up feeling like shit in the middle of what looked like Davy Jones's locker from that pirates movie that sort of but wasn't a complete flop. There were a multitude of possible explanations, but none of them were good.

Laura amused herself by measuring the rough height of her shadow using Katy as a reference point, and then set about scribbling some half remembered equations in the sand in front of her, mumbling along as she went.

Then Katy woke, and in typical Morris style, proceed to throw a shit fit once it was apparent that they were alone and in no immediate danger.

"Great. The world managed to end while I was sleeping, and now I get spend the rest of my admittedly short life trying to find a decent cup of coffee and some Advil in a totally cliched post-apocalyptic kind of way that probably involves pervy cannibals and not enough deodorant. Fuck this fucking shit, Laur, I fucking quit no job is worth this crap every week."

"Actually, with boobs like those you might survive all the way through the second act. And its not post-apocalyptic, it's probably just Arizona."

Katy whirled around, zeroing in on where Laura primly sat, probably looking very serene for someone who had just woken up in the middle of the desert with no memory of how she got there. She had gotten top marks in facial distortion and movement control.

"And how, pray tell, have you managed to divine that, oh great oracle?" Soon to be Special Agent Morris was in fine form today, it seemed. Laura shrugged slightly, deigning to crack one eye open to observe her solemnly for a minute. Hangover or no, Katy was just the tinniest bit too hysterical about their first apparent real kidnapping situation.

"Because unlike you, I bothered to attend the SHIELD Seminar on calculating your coordinates based on the time and the length of your shadow. And bothered to wear a watch. Ipso Facto, we are somewhere in Arizona, most likely the north western quadrant, but it has been a few months so I might be a little rusty." Laura calmly closed her eyes again upon finishing, tipping her face up to enjoy the last bits of the late afternoon sun as the day slipped towards evening. The desert got cold at night, after all. And if she stopped to think about it, Laura was pretty certain that she'd be less useful then Katy was at the moment. Ahh the joys of distancing ones self from reality.

"Oh."

Katy was kind of wishing she had some of those stupid looking issued sunglasses they got on training runs right about now. Sun glare is no laughing matter.

And now that she mentioned it, that particular shade of pinkish dust that was busy permanently attaching itself to her favorite pair of off duty sneakers did seem familiar. Definitely Arizona.

Katy settled down a few feet from Laura, still sulking slightly. Odds were once they had missed their final evening check in before the weekend, SHIELD would have followed protocol, activating their sub-dermal trackers which still seemed to be present and functional, and were on their way to hitch them a lift back to civilization. Not that the sand wasn't tempting, really. But she had plans, and got enough time in remotely located areas on a regular basis as it was. Not to mention she still had that damn headache.

Of course then, was when the helicopter that was definitely not friendly looking showed up.

Perfect. And of course today would have been the only day that both of them had remembered to sign back in their weapons before leaving for the weekend. It couldn't have happened the other fifty one fridays out of the year when they were training or at the very least packing. Noooo, it had to be the one long weekend they both had off after an entire year of waking up at the ass crack of dawn to sit through dumbass seminars with topics such as "Sexual Harassment in High Activity Workplaces" and "Location Calculation 101: What To Do When You Have Nothing To Work With".

Surfing in Maui, or even just vegging in front of the screen for a couple of hours this weekend, was looking less and less likely to be honest.

LOCATION ? APPROXIMATELY SIX DAYS LATER.   
Once dumped back into her cozy little no bed no bath cell after a particularly enthusiastic round of 'annoy the prisoner into giving us what we want", Laura had to admit both the first and the last thing she expected to see was her partner. Especially her partner who for all appearances was completely untouched if a bit pale and malnourished.

Laura hardly felt guilty for immediately assuming it was a trap at least until she got a closer look at her partners face. Of the two choices, She was almost glad that she felt like crap, instead of... Of whatever Katy had obviously been through. Externally, she looked fine, but Laura had been working and living hip to hip with her for almost a year. She knew what to look for, and Katy looked like shit.

Laura didn't look too red hot either. Their Captors methods of persuasion had been... Frighteningly efficient, if ineffective. It was only a matter of time.

Morris, curled up awkwardly in the most nominally defensible corner, cracked an eye open, and a faint smile. "Hey, you. How's it going?" Morris's voice was dry and raspy, from dehydration, screaming, or some combination in between. Maro's was the same. "Oh you know, same old same old. The road is made by walking, and all that."

Katy huffed a laugh. "'el camino se hace al andar.' That's what my baby sister used to say."

Laura looked over at her cautiously. For all that she blathered, getting meaningful personal information out of Katy was like pulling teeth from an endangered puma with a horde of vengeful animal activists after you on a good day. Offering it up while sitting in the middle of a dank cell in an upright fetal position with what looked to be a mild concussion was so far out of the realm of ordinary, it was almost comforting in a not at all disturbing sort of way. Not to mention Laura hoped she could spot a peace offering when she saw one.

"... I didn't now you had a sister." Was the incredibly smooth reply Laura managed to come up with. Well done Laur, really. Katy glanced up briefly, offering a weak smile to her partner of three years, before returning to her concentrated unwavering perusal of a one of many suspicious dark stains on her jeans that could be anything, really.

"Yeah, I did. Just a year younger then me. Aly, my baby sister. She was so smart, had just gotten a three month long internship at a top insurance company at seventeen when it happened."

The silence that followed was deafening, before she continued.

"'the path is made by walking' she used to say, and every time she said it her eyes would just light up, like it was some kind of personal salvation, some kind of guiding light that meant somehow, it would all work out okay.

I was gone, when it happened. Off at my fancy school, with my fancy scholarship and fancy new friends. I couldn't wait to get out, and she was just so fucking proud of me, her brave big sister, off out in the world, both of us making it in the real world.

I found out later that she’d tried to call me, but I guess the lines were busy by then, or I didn’t pick up my phone, or...

I was watching, on the tv, by the time the second one was hit. I didn’t even know about the internship, that she was there, I guess she wanted to surprise me about it during our next call that weekend. I didn’t know until I tried to call the house hours later, and our Mom picked up instead of Aly, and she couldn’t say anything she was crying so hard.

They told me later that there was nothing any one could have done, that the floor she was on was so high firefighters would have never been able to to reach it, that the staircase would have been half collapsed and packed full of panicking people by the time she reached it.

It was only about a year and a bit after that SHIELD offered to pay for the rest of my degree in exchange for working for them. You asked me once why I joined up, and that's why. Aly.

They never even found the body. We don’t how she died, or if she was even... We just don’t. No body deserves that kind of ending”.

Laura shuffled awkwardly back across the cell to Katy's huddled corner, settling in just within arms reach of her without touching. When she'd made her blasé seeming comment, she'd never expected Katy to actually open up like that because of some seemingly insignificant phrase. Katy was surprisingly tanctured for someone who talked so much, and less likely to share her past then a cell rat was to have the urge to do the macarena while singing the Star Spangled Bannner. Their surroundings probably weren't helping either.

"We won't be like that, K. I promise. You are either going to get to see your Mom again, or I am going to make damn sure she has a body to bury. And I know you'll do the same for me. No one left behind or forgotten, thats the deal right? Besides, someone has to feed Lawrence's cat so its mangy ass won't starve to death, and I ain't doing it all on my lonesome".

Katy huffed wetly, brushing back a few strands of unkept hair as she peered up at her partner. "Thanks, Laur." She whispered, letting Laura pull her into an awkward one armed hug that neatly hide her pass off of a 2 inch nail and broken letter opener, from the nominally hidden cameras in the cell. Laura helped cover by letting her hair swing down as she shushed soothingly, disguising Katy's subtle shaking of lock picking as tears.

Show time t-minus 48 hours, regardless of if SHIELD ever got up off their asses and managed to find them in time. They needed a way out, and Katy was the bait then.

Trap set, and match.

JUST INSIDE THE RUSSIAN BORDER, THREE DAYS LATER.

Driving a car was not, surprisingly enough, something Laura was great at. Sure, she could skid around corners and barrel backwards down alleyways with the best of them, but odds are the paint job would be the least of your worries by the time you ever convinced her to get behind the wheel of a car. Like right now.

Oddly enough, Katy's atonal rhythmic cursing from the passengers seat was somewhat soothing; Even half hidden under her heavy panting in an attempt not to respond to the agony that is a nine mil round nestled against her right ulna rendering her hand pretty much useless, the other alternating between neatly tying off a vaguely trendy cover for her temporary patch job with a stolen scarf and trying to get the radio in their equally stolen car to play anything but some god awful Moldavian acoustic folk rock station. Thank your local deities for small favors that she was at least functionally left handed, if not fully ambidextrous though to be fair she was pretty crappy with chopsticks either way. Somehow Maro had never quite got around to asking her about that. Hadn't seemed really that important until right now, to be honest.

Laura had listened to worst background noises while driving before. At least Katy was breathing, and the car didn't seem to be actively jettisoning brake fluid anywhere near as quickly as it could be. Sometimes you just have to stop and appreciate the little things in life.

To summarize, Russia in the summer, hot wired car, bullet hole, cursing. Just another day at the metaphysical office. Maria was not going to be happy when they finally checked in. To put it lightly, being almost two weeks late was probably not the best way to start your career off. This wasn't the 1900's anymore.

Ah, the good old days. When you could go rampaging across Europe meeting four other professionals in your line of work and seven people who have tried to kill you in the past all before lunch, and then blame every thing on the Russians and be back in the States in time to catch an evening showing of Casa Blanca or what have you. Got to love the 60's.

Not that Laura would know about that, of course. Goodness knows SHE certainly wasn't old enough to have been active overseas during all that fuss, and certainly wouldn't still be working as a Wet Ops Clean Up Specialist after all this time if she had .

She'd have asked for a raise at least, by now.

Careening around one more corner, she spotted a nearly familiar storefront, just in time to slid into the last available parking spot right ahead of some douchebag in a red chevrolet, who kindly assisted Laura in facilitating driver to driver communications by rolling his window down just far enough to hear the litany of rusty insults that accompanied her half heart crude gesture as she wrestled her now slightly incoherent partner out of the passengers seat and down the sidewalk to the relative safety of indoors.

Carter's Tea, Crisps, & Secondhand Books hadn't changed a single bit in all the time that it had existed. From the faded and neglected single coat of green paint on the front door, to the menu (fresh tea and single serving bags of potato chips), Carter's was refreshingly reassuring, if always somewhat odd.

Because really, who likes potato chips with hot tea?

Carter herself didn't seem to really age, so much as weather. Her ashy blonde hair was now more thin gray streaks then blonde, and her ever calm face a little more lined, but from the reading glasses she wore for show to the way she could walk all the way through the creaky section of the kitchen without making a single sound, Carter was still, well, Carter. And mildly proud of it, too.

When you step through the doors of Carter's Tea, Crisps, And Secondhand Books, the very first thing you will never notice is the smell. Thick rich and warm, that indubitable smell of old books, fresh tea, and people. The second thing you won't notice, is Carter herself. And that is just the way she likes it. All the better to sneak up behind you in the historical fiction section later, as you try to puzzle out why all the english novels are categorized by the cyrillic alphabet, and the russian novels by the latin alphabet.

Never the less, banging in through the front door half dragging your semi catatonic partner with muddy boots on and a some what concerning gap in her arm, was a pretty damn good way to get noticed, especially since the resident oddball owner was in fact a semi retired SHIELD Agent that Katy wasn't strictly suppose to know about, but since Carter was the maiden half aunt of Alex's cousin or something to that effect, as word had kinda gotten around.

By which she meant the last time Alex had gotten rip roar drunk with her before heading off on assignment, Alex'd turned to her, and said with all the seriousness of an incredibly level headed and clear eyed drunk who could still hit a darts board bull eyes at fifty paces; "If you get stuck in southern Russia for some asinine reason, and don't give me that look Morris I know you, you should look up Carter's Tea, Crisps and Secondhand Books. She used to be SHIELD, she'd good, and while she may scare the crap out of you but odds are she'll help you in a pinch for old times sake. Plus we're like, related or something too." Alex had then proceed to steal the last bottle of jack out of her hands, and chugged the thing before going to bed, but the advice stuck in her hazy memory as something good to know none the less.

Carter stared at the odd tableau that they made as Katy dripped muddy slush on her carpet, and Laura dripped bloody mud on Katy. "Uh, hi, are you Carter? I'm a friend of Alex's, or, well, we're all flatmates actually. We, uh, could use some help." Katy offered. It didn't make the double barreled shotgun that Carter had leveled at them the moment they tumbled in any less threatening, but at least she'd taken her finger off one of the triggers. It was a start, at least.

After staring for a few more moments, Carter sighed and lowered the shotgun. "Fucking SHIELD, am I right?" She barely waited for Katy's affirmation before continuing. "Come on then, let's get you two in the back. No sense in frightening the neighbors anymore then necessary".

Being hauled into a storage room and patched up with frightening efficiency by a women with a crisp british accent in her 90's that somehow managed to put the kettle on for tea, replace the makeshift tourniquet on Laura's leg with a real one, and also dig out a phone that looked like it was from the 60's, all while calming carrying on idle chit chat about the weather, was at the very least disconcerting. And immensely comforting.

With a few hand gestures and head jerks that Ms. Carter loftily ignored, they agreed to trust Alex's Grand Aunt once removed or whatever she was. Besides, the brisk SHIELD security codes she was currently rattling off into the rotary dial phone were authentic, if slightly outdated, and the tea was truly magnificent.

Laura graciously decided now would be a good time to pass out. Katy magnanimously elected to catch her before she hit the counter they were currently sitting on. Ms. Carter sighed, pulled an iv stand and saline packets out of nowhere in particular, and began setting up. Apparently the helicopter was going to be just a touch longer then she liked.

Oh well. At least this one hadn't gotten blood and bullets all over the place like the last one Alex had sent her. They were going to have to have a talk about just who was worthy of her assistance, and why these two specifically. The british one (always nice to hear the mother tongue) couldn't be older then 20 if she was a day. Honestly.


	5. Epilogue.

Agent Kathryn 'Katy' Morris has an excellent reputation as a Shield Agent. She was smart, fast, competent, and had a sardonic streak that usually translated into her being unfailing polite to people she hated just to infuriate them. When she was in the field she was professional, courteous, and generally followed orders. She could also make just about any electronics either sit up and beg, or blow up.

And she handed her paperwork in on time and filled out.

In short, she was a Handlers wet dream.

Agent Laura Maro makes a very crappy cup of coffee, and an extremely crappy cup of tea, technically speaking. But where her coffee is either watery and grainy or acidic and grainy, her tea is thick, black, and strong enough to potentially fuel a Russian Speznaut through an entire Russian Winter on the strength of it alone. An unspoken SHIELD legend has it that Director Fury himself first met her when he stopped in at a crappy roadside diner after a hideous day, and she ignored his food order and instead brought him a giant mug of her Tea and a pack of crackers instead, no charge. The unmuttered rumor goes he hired her on the strength of her tea alone, and that her language skills and latent aptitude for anything with wings were just a bonus.

The first time Katy pulled her shirt a little lower and leaned in a little closer to get a former informant to a very nasty trafficking ring, she didn't hesitate or freeze once until the dirtbag was in custody, his apartment cleaned out and job quit via a very convincing email, all traces of him erased like he never existed. Laura didn't blink either, until they got back to their motel room and Katy spent two hour dry heaving on the dinky bathroom floor, desperately trying to forget the brush of his skin while Laura silently ran through their post op procedures and handed her dampened towels to wipe her face with. In exchange, updated intelligence on the movements and whereabouts of every single one of Laura's ex's had mysteriously appeared on her bedside table the first night they were back at base.

Together Agents Maro and Morris are... effective, without being ostentatious. For the most part. At least, after their initial period of adjustment, which included a certain little cleanup mission down in Guatemala were Agent Morris had been stationed in the rafters of a water tower on surveillance with Maro as her Spotter. Rumor had it when their target and company walked directly beneath their surveillance position, the course of the conversation lead the targets to deem it necessary to sing the chorus of LMFAOs "I Am Sexy And I Know It" with the accompanying popularized dance moves. 

After being motionless and completely silent for over nine hours, one Very Special Agent Katy Morris inadvertently laughed so hard she fell out of her perch two stories up, and landed flat on her back in front of the target. Special Agent Laura Maro on the other hand, managed to choke on her gum, and had to preform the Himlec maneuver on herself before climbing down to assist her fallen partner.

What the file also neglects to note it that while they were detaining the target and transferring him into custody, Katy never actually stopped laughing. In fact the next day as they were reporting to debriefing back at base, she passed him being escorted to holding, and broken out laughing again so hard she almost passed out and had to be put on oxygen.

Yes, after the initial settling phase, they were for the most part, as average as you could get and still be a highly skilled and specialized SHIELD operations team. Maro played poker on a bimonthly basis with some of the other pilots, and Morris's hobby, was, well, hobbies. At last count she had learned how to tango, crochet, knit, yoga, scuba dive, and play football. Both have racked up higher write ups for having take away delivered to the front desk then any other division combined, and the local Tai place knows the "actor of the week"s order by heart. Rumor has it Fury is still not sure how they keep managing to muggle the pizza gal past security...


End file.
